North America — Volume 2 by Anthony Trollope
page 84 of 434 (19%)
page 84 of 434 (19%)
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under the same circumstances as a white man. He is subjected to
qualifications which in truth debar him from the poll. A white man votes by manhood suffrage, providing he has been for one year an inhabitant of his State; but a man of color must have been for three years a citizen of the State, and must own a property qualification of 50l. free of debt. But political equality is not what such men want, nor indeed is it social equality. It is social tolerance and social sympathy, and these are denied to the negro. An American abolitionist would not sit at table with a negro. He might do so in England at the house of an English duchess, but in his own country the proposal of such a companion would be an insult to him. He will not sit with him in a public carriage, if he can avoid it. In New York I have seen special street cars for colored people. The abolitionist is struck with horror when he thinks that a man and a brother should be a slave; but when the man and the brother has been made free, he is regarded with loathing and contempt. All this I cannot see with equanimity. There is falsehood in it from the beginning to the end. The slave, as a rule, is well treated--gets all he wants and almost all he desires. The free negro, as a rule, is ill treated, and does not get that consideration which alone might put him in the worldly position for which his advocate declares him to be fit. It is false throughout, this preaching. The negro is not the white man's equal by nature. But to the free negro in the Northern States this inequality is increased by the white man's hardness to him. In a former book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies. I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the inhabitants of those islands into three classes--the white, the |
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